irirfTTvrTrrrrrrrrrrrrvrerrrrrrrrrrfrf^rrrnrrrrrnrrrrrt'nnfTF^ l.<JfclAJr 1 lUK. HV E.M.FORSTER'S A PASSAGE TO INDIA 168 INTRODUCTION In this chapter, E.M.Forster's A Passage to India will be analysed in general, while its position in the postcolonial era will be the specific concern. Major characters such as Aziz and Fielding are of great importance since, together, they reflect a unique relationship between Anglo-Indians and natives. The novel is also a departure from the linear to a modern strategy of narration. It is Forster's greatest novel and it embodies not only the theme of human understanding but also the images of Empire and colony. The encounter between the colonizer and the colonized is artistically portrayed. It is important to trace Anglo-Indian life and work among native Indians, and to see whether they are there to proselytise the natives or only to pretend to do so in order to camouflage the Empire's ungodly designs. A point of departure for studying A Passage to India is to adopt Edward Said's strategies of reading a literary text. This novel makes an excellent case for reading a colonial text to expose its support for and complicity with the Empire. So Forster's novel is to be studied as a work of art with literary, aesthetic, cultural, and political reverberations. Biographical Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) was the only remaining child of an architect who died when the child was just one year old. His mother was from a middle class family. Morgan was the product of the English upper-middle class due to his mixing with his father's relatives, 169 particularly Marianne Thornton, his aunt, and Henry Thornton her father. She also bequeathed him a large amount of money for his educational future. In his biography of Marianne Thornton he refers to the prosperous family life at Battersee Rise. He enjoyed their company but the house did not last long. He was educated at Tonbridge School (1893-97) and at King's College, Cambridge. After his formal education he travelled for a few years and it is commonly believed that his writing was inspired by his travels. A lonely, fatherless child of shifting residences, he had a devoted mother. The death of his father increased his mother's anxiety and this resulted in his becoming a spoilt child. In Cambridge, King's College, new vistas were opened to Forster in terms of human relationships and a free intellectual atmosphere. The rest of Forster's life and novels were concerned with such relationships and atmosphere. Forster wanted to know Indians and to explore their imaginative universe. His first visit to India was mostly for pleasure and to visit his friend Masood whom he had met in 1910 at Cambridge. His Works In 1905 E.M.Forster completed and published Where Angels Fear to Tread. Then The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908), and Howards End (1910) appeared. Howards End established Forster as an important writer. The Celestial Omnibus, a collection of pastoral and fanciful short stories, was published in 1911. In 1912-13 170 he travelled to India where he met Syed Ross Masood for few months in Aligarh. After returning to England in 1913 he wrote the thematically homosexual Maurice, which circulated privately. This novel was published posthumously in 1971. He also went to Alexandria for the Red Cross in 1915. The outcome was Alexandria: A History and a Guide, which was published after revisions in 1938. Forster visited India for the second time in 1921-2. This time he worked as private secretary for the Maharajah of the native state of Devas for less than a year. In 1927 the Clark lectures were delivered, and printed as Aspects of the Novel the same year. This book proved to be a popular success. The Eternal Moment, another collection of short stories, appeared in 1928. He also completed two biographies, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickens (1934) and Marianne Thornton (1956). A collection of essays entitled Abinger l-larvest appeared in 1936 and Two Cheers for Democracy in 1931. The Hill of Devi, which is in the form of letters and commentary, was written in 1953.^ Forster was forty six when A Passage to India was published to great critical acclaim in 1924, two years after his return to England. It is a representation of the social interactions in India at the time of the British Empire, which in turn is a reflection of the binary opposition between East and West. This novel can be considered as a fiction in which characters from two different races may be studied. Of particular interest is the writer's viewpoint in picturing the natives. The middle class British administrators in A Passage to India ignore all values and 171 are blind to the Indian culture that surrounds them. Forster visited India twice, in 1912 and 1921. At the end of the first visit he began A Passage to India but could not complete it till his second visit was over. He had a hard time completing the novel, and If it were not for the warning of his friend Leonard Woolf, the novel might have been left unfinished. Woolf warned Forster that leaving it unfinished might dissatisfy him forever.^ The novel is mostly about India, rather than Indian characters; India as a world and not a country, with a profusion of different races, diverse cultures, and numerous religious beliefs. India is pictured as mysterious to the extent that it becomes totally incomprehensible to the reader. Forster took the title of his novel from a poem of the American poet Walt Whitman, published in 1871. The title of both works refers to the quest for spirituality, human relationships, and the possibility of intimacy. Almost all of Forster's fiction deals with the theme of personal relationships. Here Forster formulates a creed of his own, which is "tolerance, good temper and sympathy - they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long."^ Forster prefers the democratic state to other forms of government at this time. He managed to hide his personal life from public discussion. Forster's last novel raises an important question which can be answered at both individual and social/political levels: Can the English and the Indians be friends? The answer seems to be "No, not yet." Aziz 172 attempts to be decent to the English, but the response he gets, his arrest following the visit to the Marabar Caves, and his trial all contribute to Aziz's ultimate disappointment and anti-British sentiments. Throughout the novel. Fielding and Aziz and their friends experience and explore the barriers to inter-racial friendship in a colonial context. Due to his sustained liberal humanist world-view, Forster emphasizes the realm of the personal but actually the personal and the political cannot be two worlds apart. In other words, it is possible to have a political reading of the novel. Furthermore, >A Passage to India is such a rich and complex novel full of mysterious events, that it makes it possible for the aitic to study it from different angles. This is a novel of encounter. It has been considered as an encounter with death, hostility of nature, and the unconscious. I would rather consider it as an encounter with the "other" or an exploration of imperialism. It goes without saying that the novel is deliberately polyphonic, rather than a thesis novel. It poses various problems and perspectives. Now, if mere aesthetic matters are to be taken into consideration, elements such as structure, language, style, and so on must be considered. It is true that Forster clings to the traditional role of the novelist in writing A Passage to India. Nevertheless, there is a balance of traditional and modernist elements, which makes the process of reading challenging for the reader. The novel can be described as modernist since it incorporates the element of polyphony. It avoids final judgment. There are unfinished interpretations, multiple 173 perspectives, stereotypical and flat, as well as enigmatic and round characters in the novel. Although Forster uses irony and employs the omniscient point of view in his narration, which makes him look like a traditional novelist, he compensates for this by his consistent shift from narration to the character's point of view and vice versa. Therefore, he was not only aware of the modern trend of novel writing, but he was also a practitioner of this trend which tended to find new ways of representing reality by means of being subjective, indeterminate and close to the process of experience. V.A.Shahane describes Forster's position in these words: Forster is 'rare' because he is in part a late Victorian or an Edwardian and in part a modern. His life extends over a long period - from 1879 to 1970 - marked by rapid and radical social change ... However, it is not so much this uncommon relationship to the age that makes Forster so unique as the inherent qualities of his personality, mind and art." His Critics Personal factors should not be ignored, since it was really a personal attraction to Masood, which made Forster come to and consequently take interest in India. The writer explores the relationship between the English and Indians at an individual as well as a social level. The dedication of A passage to India to Masood can be considered as proof. Another evidence is the emphasis on the 174 relationship between Aziz and Fielding, and the significance given to their points of view.